To the Editor:

In looking at the recent Alabama High School Graduation Exam scores that were reported in your paper for Selma High School, I am not surprised.

I have always been told that the principal is the instructional leader at the school and the academic program falls under his leadership.

I think the principal at Selma High School has been too busy trying to chastise and humiliate the teachers and allowing the students to get by with everything that’s morally wrong until he has lost track of what’s going on academically in the school.

The principal has no earthly idea what the academic improvement plan looks like, much less what’s in it.

He’s never interested in what’s going on in the classroom with the teachers as relates to learning, he’s more concerned with what teachers are wearing, and who’s saying what about who?

When did you monitor the academic progress of the students? How often?

You need to produce some documentation to the stake holders, parents and to everyone of what you, as the instructional leader, did to help the students and teachers in improving scores on the grad exam.

In what ways did you motivate the students to pass? What incentives were used by you or the faculty in encouraging the students to do their best? How many pep rallies were held?

If these were your children, you would want the teachers and everybody else to do all they could to help them pass the grad exam.

If one student fails the exam, that’s too many.

Why do you think we send our students to school? We as parents are not trained to help our children with the skills on the test.

The principal is supposed to be an honest man. A man of integrity with common sense.

You can never get an appointment to see him.

I’m really tired of the way the principal at Selma High runs our school. He hasn’t done anything positive for the students at Selma High. I would like a list of accomplishments since he’s been the principal.

I want to know what are his goals for the students and teachers at Selma High? Where does he see Selma High in the next five or 10 years?

He needs to stop playing politics with the board members and go somewhere and learn what his job is.

The scores are down, Mr. Principal, can you tell us why?

The buck stops with you! How are you going to lie out of this one. Better still, who will you put the blame on this time?

Thomas Nelson